Hotel California
by Illead
Summary: This is based form the Eagle's song "Hotel California." It's rated M for references but no actions, so there's no smut. That being sad, I think this is a huge success. Fem!France and Canada pairing. One-shot. "His Matthew was gone. But deep within the mind that still ran, for its last remaning memory, Matthew was very much alive, staying at the Hotel California."


**Hotel California**

The first time Matthew ever felt lost, he remembered his mother saying that he would find his way. His mother was sweet, she was soft, she could take on any bully that ever went near her little boy. And he honored that from her, more than his father could ever give him. His father ignored everything he did: every test he aced, every bad report card (which he did on purpose), every time he made something for supper. It always confused young Matthew, and when he actually got his attention, it was when the man was drunk and his mother wasn't home. Then he endured a slap to the face, and a "J'eanne this" and "J'eanne that." His father hated his mother, and that was no surprise. By the time Matthew was 12, he realized his mother wasn't all that she seemed to be. She was different than his childhood mother.

His mother was sweet to him, paid attention to him, only because she felt obligated, and young children never see this. He was surprised that he came home one day to an empty house. It was the day before his thirteenth birthday, and he felt disappointed. Where was his loving mother and his drunk father? Why weren't they home? The preteen did his homework, he watched some television, and he made himself something to eat. Fed his cat, Majuro, a fluffy, white beast that was often forgetful of things. The animal slept as much as his father was drunk. And still Matthew was alone, making him afraid something happened. It had, he learned, not an hour later, when he got a call from the hospital. His mother had died, and he father was right beside her. He let that happen, and some time ago, they said he was on his way home. Matthew was disgusted.

So Matthew kindly told the receptionist on the phone his father would be home soon, and that he would tell him they called. She sounded unsure, as to why this little boy seemed so neutral. In truth, the Canadian was battling anger and sadness, two emotions that never, ever mixed well before. He hung up without saying goodbye. He cried until he couldn't cry anymore. He hit his head against the wall, until it hurt. He suffered in silence after that. Hours and hours went by and Matthew wanted to hit his father like he'd hit him as a child. He wanted to give him pain for not letting his mother live. His father let her die... Let the one person he liked in his life die. And that was when Matthew had the idea he knew was bad, yet he didn't feel love from his absent father. He didn't want to care for a drunk all his life. He'd go to school, he'd come home, his mother would nurse his father's hangover. It was how things were run. Then they would fight, and he knew his father only noticed him because he was the effeminate male version of his mother, glasses from the bad vision he got from his mother.

J'eanne was dead, he knew this, and it left him with improper judgement. He ran away, and only when the police found him in the park nearby did they return him to a still, unsurprisingly, empty house. He wept on the couch until he fell asleep. He dreamed of nothing but his mother's face: her eyes, he smile, her radiant presence... Then he dreamed of his father. He saw the car swerve off the road into a pole, like the hospital said. The boy wasn't there, but he could imagine it. It helped him, to not like his father, and to prepare him for when his drunken self returned. The boy hadn't felt worse when he woke up to the morning sun through the living room windows. Still the house was empty.

Matthew went to school, and took notes, and was the grade A student he always was, avoiding everyone and walking home in the rain, unlocking the front door. He repeated the day before: did his homework, watched television, ate supper. Then he went to bed in tears. His father still had not returned home. He probably forgot about him, someway or another. Today had been his thirteenth birthday, and he'd spent it alone. No friends could ever come over because his father told their parents that "Matthew wasn't allowed to have friends over anymore." The boy wept more. He spent his day into teenage-dom alone, alone and unloved by even one friend in school. No one remembered, but that was hardly shocking. No one really seemed to remember him on a good day, and on a bad day he was taken for someone else... Who he always looked nothing alike.

The years went by: empty house and empty heart. July first's just became another day to him. Nothing matter anymore, not even going past high school. The mortgage was paid off on the house by Matthew himself, and he could drive now. He was 18, he was a young adult, but still the little boy who wanted his mommy to tuck him into bed at night. Wanted his daddy to read him a bedtime story he never heard in his all his waking hours. He wanted to be loved by two parents again, not by the cold feeling in his stomach that his father was never coming home, after five years he'd not showed himself once. Matthew's grades stayed high, he owed that much to J'eanne. J'eanne... Newfound tears left his eyes onto the red sweatshirt he bought a year ago. He didn't even have Kumajirou, who passed away a year ago. He sometimes he wished that he could be Kuma.

Kumajirou didn't worry about anything, and certainly when he left out the cat door one day, he'd never looked back. That cat was a lucky bastard, Matthew decided, and he sighed again as he blocked out the images of his family and Kuma. Of the friends he'd not seen for years and years. Of the one animal he loved more than humanity. And that was all gone. He wept silently, turning the television off and closing his math textbook. His homework was over, he had watched his two hours of television, and he got up, making the same fish for supper he always ate. Matthew realized he was in a rut. He worked at a supermarket and a candy store, ever other day except the weekends. It paid well, and he had enough to feed just himself, with Kuma gone.

On this particular day, the landline rang. He blinked, staring at the usually silent telephone, hesitantly rising to his feet to answer it. Maybe, just maybe, it was his father, calling to say sorry for everything; that he would come home. His footsteps sped up, his eyes a great hopeful shine, at the very thought. He answered it on the third ring, holding it close to his ear to listen better. There was sobbing, but it was a man's sobbing. Still the young man didn't speak. Then the man on the other line started to speak. That he was sorry, that he was a horrible man, that he didn't mean to hurt him... It went on, and on. For a while, he listened. It seemed to go one for hours, when it was actually half an hour. Before the stranger hung up, he heard them say that it, was, indeed his father, and that he loved him very much.

Matthew hung up, regardless, and disconnected the phone, locking the front door. The anger surged once more, and he felt... He felt bitter. How care he call _now_ that he was 18? How dare he actually say sorry five years after the fact, leaving him alone with a two-story house and bills to pay? He lost friends to that man, his own mother... The Canadian wept on the couch until he fell asleep. Just like that day before he turned 13, he left him alone for five long, hard years! He was sorry he wasn't a father? Well, Matthew was sorry he wasn't his son, or no... He wasn't, not at all. That was the last straw. He was done. So done. Drying his bitter tears of self-pity, he packed all his clothing he thought he'd need, some snacks in the cupboards, his hockey stick... He took his extra sweatshirt, a blanket, and his copy of _Les Merables_ and _Le Petit Prince _and _Saint Nicolas _left by his mother, her note scrawled lovingly inside the cover. Stuffing that into his hockey bag, he brought the hockey puck with him... Just in case.

Then he left the house, door open for anyone who wanted something. He walked away from that life, he finally decided. If his father wanted him back in his life, or if he wanted his father back in his life, the man would have to quit drinking, which he could tell he hadn't. The young Canadian walked down to the highway outside the family-friendly neighborhood, and kept going. Just like Kumajirou and his father, he never looked back. That seemed to be a bitter theme in his family. He didn't stop walking, didn't eat, and didn't sleep for two days. By the third day, he felt light-headed and his vision was blurry from such sleepless nights. He saw a bright light before he felt himself collapse. Was this his salvation?

Matthew opened his eyes to a Victorian house, old yet... It looked so warm for his weary soul. Maybe they had a bed... He went inside the building, up the dirt path, where expensive cars, like a Mercedes bends and Rolls Royce. He didn't know the others... But the Cadilac he passed directly looked dusty. Had no one driven them lately? It should have been a warning sigh, yet... He couldn't think right, and as he went inside, he rang the bell at the empty receptionist desk. After a while, a woman who looked around 24 answered him, gave him a key, and asked him to sign a paper. He did, seeing none of the guests every checked out before it snapped shut. She spoke to him, quietly, as he opened the door to the guest room:

"_**Welcome to the Hotel California **_

_**Such a lovely place... (Such a lovely place) **_

_**Such a lovely face**_

_**Plenty of room at the Hotel California**_

_**Any time of year (Any time of year)**_

_**You can find it here."**_

He slept the best he had in years, and when he awoke the next day, he dressed in an outfit in his hockey bag. He put the bag in the closet and entered the hallway, going downstairs. Music was playing, and the curious Canadian looked into the ballroom it was coming from. Or... No... It was a courtyard looking like a ballroom in its vast size. And then he saw her: she was beautiful, with the pretties cerulean blue eyes and long blonde hair. She was curvacious, she was vivacious. She was... She was the prettiest woman he'd ever seen, and he didn't even know who she was.

His eyes scanned the area around him, before the Canadian forgot all about breakfast to the pretty music in the sun-lit courtyard gave her a glow. But she wasn't alone: there was an American, with a cowlick, eating a burger and drinking Budwiser. There was a man drinking tea, with the bushiest, funniest eyebrows and a scowl. There was an albino in the shade, just watching her with a smirk, drinking a German beer. There was a Russian and what looked to be two women beside him, one with long, long white hair like his; she was tell, clinging to his arm. The other woman had brown hair and a large chest. She had a warm aura about her, and the Russian seemed to like her more, just drinking his vodka between them. There was a Spanish man she was currently dancing with, tan and oblivious to everything but the dance. Soon the dance ended, and Matthew sat down somewhere.

There was no wine, and even when he asked this to the captain giving drinks to everyone else, the vodka, beer, tea, and water for the lady. She sat in the middle of the courtyard, with the grace of a woman. His eyes were drawn to her. She was a mystery of a woman, in that elegant dress... He didn't notice anyone see him, he was used to being ignored. The Canuck blinked, not wanting to join any of them. But then he found the lady 'come hithering' to him, in which he slowly sat across from her from his far away table. She spoke of things she liked, how he would make a good dance partner, that her name was Marrianne... He smiled evenly, more than he had in years.

That night, he fell into bed with the lovely Marrianne, and the next morning was still there, as was she. He found comfort in that. Her lovely friends, the men from the day before, and the Russian's sisters, which she admitted to also falling into bed with. He didn't look surprised, nor did he feel it was wrong she had. And that was how he spent his nights, every Tuesday and Thursday or when she didn't have another being a bedwarmer. It felt natural, normal, as if he'd done this his whole life. The former rut he was in was replaced, he realized, with Marrianne. The lovely Marrianne. Yet often enough, in the hallways, he heard a voice much like the receptionist, who had vanished after his first night at the Hotel California:

"_**Welcome to the Hotel California**_

_**Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)**_

_**Such a lovely face**_

_**They livin' it up at the Hotel California**_

_**What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise)**_

_**Bring your alibis."**_

The years went by, he never aged, even if his birthdays were celebrated all day with the lovely Marrianne. It was his third year that he found himself in a pickle, that he was to spend his birthday with not just Marrianne, but with Arthur, the bushy-browed man; with Alfred, the American, and his good friend Gilbert, the albino. With Ivan, the vodka-drinking Russian, his clingy sister Natalia, and then his short sister, Yaketerina.

He got to know them all in his stay here, for three years, and didn't seem to remember why he wanted to lave in the first place. They dined, he found, to celebrate his birthday. The mirrors were on the ceiling, in the master's chambers. A feast and champaigne lay on ice, in an ice bucket. The men began to eat, Mrrianne included, which Matthew was unsure still. The others stabbed the meat with their sharp knives, but were unable to eat it. He didn't get why. And then Marrianne turned to him, saying:

_**"We are all just prisoners here, of our own device."**_

Matthew rose to his feet, saying he was tired. They didn't notice him, these people who had become his friends in the last three years... He had to flee. Calmly, he got his belongings together. He left nothing behind, prepared to go back home, where he was safe. Safe from these savage beasts. The Canadian wasted three years of sex, alcohol, and general falseness. His mind wandered to the cars out front, how dusty and beautiful and old they were. He recalled the lack of the receptionist, the names he now knew as the people he'd made friends with. None of them had ever left, like addicts. He was the same, the same rut as before, in a different style, a different formation of people... He began running down the unfamiliar corridors he saw on his way in, his memory foggy. He was stopped, shortly before the pretty gate he'd found open once, three years ago, and now locked:

_**"Relax," said the night man,**_

_**"We are programmed to receive.**_

_**You can check-out any time you like,**_

_**But you can never leave!"**_

Everything went black, as the car stopped and the driver, an elderly man with spectacles just like Matthew's, knelt by the dead body that was Matthew. His arm was red, his face was red, his glasses cut into his skin... The man wept openly. The older man called his name, again and again again, to no success... He wept like a child. Like his child he wished he still had, when he left him so long ago. The child... He just ran over in the cold, misty rain. His Matthew was gone. But deep within the mind that still ran, for its last remaning memory, Matthew was very much alive, staying at the Hotel California. If he tried... He could hear him say:

"_**Welcome to the Hotel California**_

_**Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)**_

_**Such a lovely face**_

_**Plenty of room at the Hotel California**_

_**Any time of year (Any time of year)**_

_**You can find it here."**_

-FINI-

** **Author's Note**: Okay, so there we go. I finally wrote this, after deciding one what subject to make it and after I figured this morning that Hetaliawas just fine, it's Hetalia. Which, by the way, I do not own. The song is by the Eagles, "Hotel California." Hope this is good. I based it off the song itself and included only the chorus and quotes in the song. I hope you liked it~! It only took me four hours, which is a plus.

All my love,

~Illead **


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